AI IS NOT A MARKETING STRATEGY

AI is everywhere. Every platform claims to do your marketing, write your content, run your campaigns, and practically read your customers’ minds. And sure, it’s impressive that you can create a video of a dog ride a bicycle through a kitchen in a matter of seconds. But let’s be clear: AI is not a marketing strategy.

It’s a tool. A really helpful one. But without a solid strategy behind it, AI is just noise. The kind that eats up valuable time and energy without moving the needle on your business goals.

So if you’re a small business owner, especially one wearing all the hats (including the marketing one), this one’s for you. Let’s talk about a real marketing strategy and how to create one that works without blowing your budget.

How to Create a Marketing Strategy

Start With Your Business Goals

Before you worry about platforms or tools or hashtags, ask yourself: What do I want to achieve this year?

• Do you want more foot traffic? 

• More online sales? 

• More design clients?

• More renovation projects?

• More local awareness? 

• More repeat customers? 

Your marketing strategy should be a direct response to your business goals. Everything else flows from there. AI can help execute, but only after you know what you’re aiming for.

Know Your Customers (Really Know Them)

You can’t market well if you’re guessing who your audience is.

Start small:

• What problems are your customers trying to solve? – Can you solve it? How? Your messaging should reflect your solution.

• Where do they spend their time, online and offline? – How might you be present there? Is it feasible for you to be there?

• What kind of language do they use when talking about your product or service? – Use their words and rephrase them with your solution.

You’ve heard the term SEO (search engine optimisation) on repeat. The best SEO is from Voice of Consumer data (VOC).

Regularly check sites like REDDIT. What are people saying about your industry or your type of product there? What pain points are they revealing to their peers? They may never tell you the things they reveal on sites like REDDIT. You could use AI to quickly summarise a conversation and find the most valuable information to suit your business goals.

Talk to a few of your best customers. Ask questions. Listen. Jot it down.

What you find by doing this exercise will become the foundation for what you say, where you say it, and how often you do it. Because, let me tell you, posting every single day on social media is not feasible, nor appreciated by everyone’s target audience.

PICK Two OR THREE Organic Channels—and Do Them Well

Now that you have your messaging, it’s time to decide where to share it.

Trying to be everywhere leads to burnout and watered-down results. Instead, pick one or two marketing channels that make sense for your audience and your capacity. Always think quality over quantity. Remember, no one knows your business like you do. Though you’ll have plenty of friends saying you should be dancing on TikTok, not every channel will work for every business.

Some low-cost, high-impact ideas:

• Social media – You want to build a community and show your brand’s personality organically. See this blog for some >>> social media realities <<<

• Email marketing – Keep your audience up to date on sales or top of mind if you’re luxury, and don’t post sales. What projects have you been up to? New team members? New social causes you’re supporting? MailChimp offers free scheduling services and decent templates to get you going. It also includes survey opportunities. If you have the budget to pay for the subscription service, you will receive additional insights to your audience.

• Google Business Profile – Google business profiles show up on Google Maps as well as during search results. This is a must.

• SEO blog content – Post a blog at least once a month. Use your data retrieved in the previous section to inform your blog topics. It helps keep your website from going stagnant and adds new ways for search crawlers to find you.

• Out of Home – If you have a brick-and-mortar location, out of home is a marketing channel that you must employ. Great signage, curb appeal are expected, but how will you get people to understand you’re locally owned and operated? Traditional billboards, digital billboards, bus stops, bus benches, and community newsletters are just a few of the out of home options you can utilize.

• Organic marketing takes time – Ads are a faster way to build your audience, but organic content builds trust and authority. Don’t lose heart. If you can’t afford to pay for ads or boosted posts, organic content is valuable, but don’t expect results within a few months.

Use AI for Execution, Not Direction

Once you’ve got your goals, audience, and channels sorted, then bring AI into the mix.

Use it to:

• Draft social captions – Don’t forget to edit them! Even when you train your AI, it will still use some tell-tale verbiage that AI wrote it.

• Brainstorm social media ideas and blog post titles – You can even allow it to write blogs for you, but you should always edit to offer value to your clients. To form this blog, Britt told AI what she wanted to write about. It gave her an outline, and she went in and offered real-world insights to offer value for you. It saved at least two hours of work.

• Refine your email copy – Perhaps you know you have a problem with wordiness and need some focus.

• Repurpose existing content into new formats – Create once and disseminate forever in multiple different ways. Perhaps something did really well, and it might do well in another way.

Don’t let AI set your tone, define your value, or decide what matters to your audience. That’s your job and you know your customers better than any algorithm ever will.

Measure What Matters

You don’t need fancy dashboards, but you do need to understand some of the data and what’s most valuable to you.

A few examples:

• Website traffic from blog posts? Good. Go a bit further and see what pages on your website are receiving the most hits. Why is that? What could you do to improve their experience and get them to stay longer on your website before leaving?

• More people asking how they can buy from you? Great. Except that this information should be easily found everywhere you’re online, so that’s telling you that you may need to improve your online presence.

• A bump in email subscribers? Love that for you! People WANT to hear from you. You’ll also get a few unsubscribes. Don’t let that stop you. People unsubscribe for many reasons unrelated to you. As long as you’re growing, don’t be concerned. In fact, this may improve your open rate – which is also an important metric. How many people opened your email? How many people clicked links in your email? These things show intent. Someone who isn’t interested, won’t perform these steps.

• Track progress monthly. What’s growing? What’s flat? What metrics are most important to you? Adjust as needed but be careful not to over-correct. You might just break something that was working.

Keep It Simple, Keep It Consistent

A strong marketing strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. The simpler it is, the more likely you are to stick with it.

Here’s a quick checklist to stay grounded:

• Clear business goals

• Consistent messaging

• Defined audience

• 2 to 3 organic channels

• Content you can realistically create

• Some digital advertising, if you can afford it

• Tools (including AI) to help you execute, not plan

• A basic way to quickly track success

You don’t need to go viral. Virality might be fun and put a feather in your cap, but it doesn’t always equal sales. You don’t need to master every trend. You just need a strategy that reflects your business, your audience, and your capacity to act and to show up consistently.

When you’re ready to hand off the parts that are too time-consuming (or just plain annoying), that’s where we come in. But for now, keep it clear, simple, and rooted in what matters.

Need help with your strategy? Talk to Britt!